Summary: 17 Rodent Scatterhoarders as
Conditional Mutualists
Tad C. Theimer
Department of Biological Sciences, Northern Arizona University,
Flagstaff, AZ 86011, USA
Introduction
Seeds dispersed by vertebrates can face pot-
entially very different seed fate pathways.
One of these is via vertebrates that pose lit-
tle threat to the seed itself, either dropping
the seed in the course of fruit handling
or passing the seed relatively unharmed
through the gut (`benign dispersers' or
`legitimate' dispersers of Schupp (1993)).
Alternatively, seeds could be dispersed by
vertebrates that potentially act as either
seed predators or seed dispersers by con-
suming and damaging a significant propor-
tion of seeds they handle. One set of
animals that act in this way are those that